This project began for owners and designers Rajive Chaudhry and Janis McClinch with a spontaneous decision to move from Boston, USA to New Delhi, India in March of 2004. They left their perspective jobs rented their house and flew to New Delhi with a few suitcases and began their new life in India just a block away from B-19 in Nizamuddin East.
Among the other goals they had, one of them was to have a home in New Delhi where Mr. Chaudhry grew up. For their first year in India, they looked all over Delhi for a place they could feel at home, but nothing compared to Nizamuddin East. Then, an advertisement appeared in the newspaper in June of 2005 announcing that bnineteen was for sale. We rang the doorbell and asked the owners if we could buy the house. That was the beginning of the project to create bnineteen Luxury Hotel.
After a long and tedious permitting process the work finally began in October 2005 to renovate and transform the old house into what it is today. They lived in the house towards the end of construction with the dust, the heat, the noise and many workers on site. It was an exciting time to live there and see the house come up day by day with a lot of dedication and devotion. In December of 2006 B-19 was finally completed.
Click here to see portraits of the workers who helped create bnineteen.